The Royal Guard
by Shulamith Bonderovsky
Summary: An account of the retrieval of Princess Mara Jade Palpatine. A prequel to "The Order." Time: a little more than a decade before "A New Hope."
1. The Unit

The wind wailed across the barren ground. The sea of sand stretched in all directions, flat and arid under the blue sky. The sky was strange. It lacked depth. It was bright blue, almost neon, like a lightsaber's blade, they thought, but did not verbalize, because the young lieutenant was there. The sky was blue, and bright, and clear and high overhead, but nothing flew in it, and no wispy white clouds hung suspended in it, like dregs of milk in a dirty glass full of dishwater. It was like an illusion, a primitive illusion- not even a hologram. A painted screen, like very low-budget stage scenery, or like an ancient mural on the wall of some well-preserved ruin.

It felt remote. Even as they rode over it, watching the heat turn the sand into mirror-ponds, it felt remote.

After a time, the youngest spoke up. His number was not worth telling; he had it on a card and on his dog tags. His name was Twitch. He was not part of their unit. He was from the local garrison, and he would be their guide.

"You know, I really hoped I'd get this assignment," he had admitted without shame, their last night in town, at the cantina. "I mean, we all did. Everyone in my unit. They're so jealous…just kidding, they're happy for me. We were so disappointed when we found out we all couldn't go. But listen, you guys don't have to worry. I know the Dune Sea like the back of my hand. And all the farmers know me. And the Jawas. Even some of the Sand People know our unit. As long as you're with me, you never have to worry about getting help in the desert."

Now, somewhat less enthusiastic, chastened by their silence, he asked, "So, what do you guys need to find the Thar for?"

"That's classified information, Private," snapped the young lieutenant, Tanis. He made a futile attempt to brush the sand from his stiff black tunic, which he insisted on wearing instead of the locals' neutral, breathable garb. The wind whipped a wispy dirty-blond hair from his forehead; he did his best to comb it back into place with pale, stubby fingers. On his other hand, those fingers tapped a silent, rapid tattoo on the speeder's armrest. He seemed stiff, like his uniform, starched. In the heat, he was fading, and Twitch thought at any minute he might start to dehydrate completely and grow crinkly around the edges.

"Sorry, sir," he said sincerely, wishing silently that he had a drink of the strong whiskey the Tusken distilled in their fabled underground mines. He thought Tanis could use a shot or two, poor guy.

"Emperor got one of their women knocked up." The statement was said without care or discernible emotion, by a soldier slumped in the back of the speeder.

Tanis wheeled on the trooper, but Twitch could see the fear beneath his annoyance. "Soldier, I thought I made it clear that information was-"

"You did," retorted the soldier calmly. "I just didn't care, _sir._" He lifted his helmet. His hair was clipped long for a trooper, and hung down in his face, uncombed. Part of that face was occupied by a semicircular, swirling tattoo in bluish ink; most of what remained was split vertically by a jagged scar. "Twelve years ago, they're saying, about," he informed the private, mostly to screw with Tanis. "Security risk, it is, letting the kid stay here with no protection."

Twitch frowned thoughtfully. "But he'd have plenty of protection. With all due respect, Mr. Burn- I mean, sir. The desert is so open, the tribe would be able to see anyone coming a kilometer away. And it's easy to get lost if you don't know the area, and if you get lost, you're usually dead. And as for the tribe's lair, the caves they say the Tusken have underground- well, that's safer than the Imperial palace, no one even knows where those are. Or if they exist."

The scar-faced man took from his utility belt some foul-smelling leaves and waxed flimsiplast. He rolled the two together and lit it, inhaling elegantly. "Soldier," Tanis snapped, reddish patches appearing on his high, pale cheeks, "There is no smoking on a mission."

The trooper looked down at his cigar and smiled almost kindly. "Looks like there is."

"Burninator," said the unit commander, a warning note in his tone. "Put it out."

Burninator glared at the commander, and blew out the cigar with one puff. "You're the boss, Cody."

Commander Cody nearly smiled. "Don't you forget it."

"I bet that's what your alien boyfriend told you last night-"

"Nope, you're confusing me with you. You're the one who all the aliens love, Burnie-"

Burninator laughed. "Ah, put it in your pipe and smoke it."

"Or shall I roll it in your cig?"

"Hey, both you cool it with the alien boyfriend crap," piped up the trooper next to Cody. "Don't forget I can take both of you with one hand behind my back. Wait 'til every thugger in the galaxy hears you both got beat up by a queer."

"Aw, Kos, don't be like that, man," Burninator cried with mock feeling.

As Kos and the other, Klepto, began to join in, Twitch, the newcomer, left outside, glanced over at Tanis. The officer was staring at the unit, attempting surreptitiousness. Sand particles had re-infiltrated the folds of his tunic, losing its starch in the heat, and his hair was tangling in the wind. On his face was an expression of need so naked and virulent it made Twitch feel even sorrier for the young officer.

Tanis' voice interrupted the unit's raucous conversation, cutting it as effectively as a lightsaber might. "Quiet down. We are emissaries of the Galactic Empire. You will conduct yourselves as such." They continued, in vengeful silence, over the shifting sand.


	2. The Civilian

In the heat of the day, they came upon the farm. No one seemed to be there. The wind blew over the mud-brick homestead and whistled over the sunken courtyard, making a slight noise like breath blowing over the neck of a bottle. "Is it deserted?" Tanis demanded, turning to Twitch. "Perhaps the tribe got here and-"

Twitch shook his head. "All due respect, sir, the tribes never attack a homestead head-on, at least not unless they're real desperate. They'll pick off livestock or steal from the stores, but they wouldn't empty out a whole farm. They know they'd have an angry mob of half-drunk moisture farmers on their ass, and the government would probably send some guns, too. They couldn't have the only people on this planet who actually pay their taxes getting run off their land by raiders.

"No, I know what it is." Proud of his savvy, he walked up to the front door and rang the bell. "Excuse me; I'm sorry to wake you," he announced himself into the com pad next to the door. "This is Private TK0963 of the Anchorhead garrison; we're out here on a mission and we just need to ask you some stuff." To the others, he explained, "It's the hottest part of the day. People are resting. Nobody works outdoors anymore until the suns' angles shift. Too dangerous. You get too much heatstroke and dehydration."

They waited. Looking down at the sandy ground, tamped down here by machinery and frequent footfalls, the trooper called Kos noticed that at high noon, the time it was now, the twin suns completely cancelled out each other's shadows.

After what was probably just a few minutes, a woman opened the door. She looked as if she might have once been attractive, in a petite, breakable sort of way. Now, her hair, the color of the sand, was cropped short, and individual hairs quivered and waved in the wind. Her face seemed sand-scoured and wind-weathered, which gave it a closed-up look. This all made her eyes far more interesting; after all these years, they were still bright, and you could see the warmth far back in them. "Private," she greeted Twitch with a measure of that warmth which Cody and his unit were not expecting. Tanis looked bewildered. At the academy, Twitch thought, they probably showed the officers-to-be training vids of what to do when civilians were uncooperative or hostile. They probably had no vids for this.

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am." Twitch grinned so she would know he was just standing on ceremony because an officer was present. "We were wondering if you'd seen any of the tribes lately."

"I think so," she replied thoughtfully. "Which ones?"

"Sand People," Klepto added helpfully.

"Oh, I know that," she assured him. "I meant, Chalahari or Thar? If you know."

"Thar, I think. Yeah, 'cause they'd be light-skinned," Twitch declared. "If you saw them without their helmets, they'd have this one girl with them who's ginger, not blond like most of them are. We have to catch up with her and her family."

"Oh, them." She nodded easily. "That's the Thar. We know them. They trade with us. Water and mushrooms for whiskey and meat. Sometimes my nephew plays with their younglings. They're all right." She pointed in the direction where, just in the distance, they could see the peaks of sand-white rock formations. "They were headed that way. Making the circle back from town. They do some trade there, too, and they have some children who go to school up there. They even speak good Basic," she added, with obvious approval. She looked them over. "Why don't you come in for a bit? You all look like you need a good dusting."

Tanis' eyes bulged, and Twitch could hear his refusal coming. "Thank you, ma'am," he said as formally as he could. "We have to get on."

"Do you have enough water?" she asked.

"Yeah, we've got plenty. Thanks." Twitch relented a little; to hell with Tanis. What did some spit-shined, starched-stiff, pretty-boy officer from the Core know about _real_ procedure out here? "We can stop on the way back, though. We might need to spend a night in your sheds, anyway." He stepped back. "Good day to you, ma'am."

"If you come by, my nephew will want to meet you," she added to Tanis, who froze as she addressed him. "I don't mean to be presumptuous, but he's going to the academy in just a few years. I bet you can give him some tips." From the hallway behind her, a man's voice echoed up, calling her name. She glanced over her shoulder momentarily, and a slight, tired shadow of a cloud passed over the twin suns of her eyes. "I'd better go get him his tea. I'll see you later, Private."

"Wow," chuckled Burninator as they flew, once again, over the sand.

"What?" asked Twitch, unbuckling his harness and turning around in his seat to look at him curiously.

"The amount of kissing ass people do out here, man." Burninator laughed again. "Boggles the mind. What do you do to 'em?"

Twitch felt his confusion showing on his face. "What do you mean, sir? I mean, we don't do anything. Not our garrison, anyway. We just…you know. Keep the law and stuff. The Hutts are our biggest problem." He stuck out his chest a little. "We're one of the only garrisons this side of the Dune Sea that's not been bought off." He shrugged. "Plus, people will try to cheat the farmers when they bring their stuff to town to sell, and you usually get some farmers or townspeople who like to beat up on the tribes. So we just deal with that." He sat back down. "I mean, that's what we do, right? We defend the Empire. That means protecting its citizens. It's in the Code and everything."

No one replied. Out of the corner of his eye, Twitch saw Cody look as if he wanted to say something; then, the commander swallowed hard and shook his head, as if he was trying simultaneously to push his words back down his throat, and clear the unwelcome thoughts from his head.


	3. The Engine

The speeder was so quiet that Twitch was almost glad when its engine started sputtering. The visit to the farm, far from cheering up the unit as he'd hoped it would- it always did him- had seemed to make everyone more despondent than before, especially Cody and Tanis. The latter now jerked out of his reverie and immediately pounced on Twitch. "Private! What the- what's happening to this vehicle?"

Twitch gulped. "It's overheating, sir," he admitted. "But…it shouldn't be. I mean, I'm not sure why; I filled the extra coolant tanks myself, sir. I've done it a million times, and nothing like this has ever happened."

"What do we do about it?" asked Cody, interrupting Tanis pre-harangue.

Twitch shook his head. "There's not much we can do, sir. We should power down for a little while, to let things cool down, but we won't get far if the engine's cooling system is malfunctioning."

"Can we make it back to that farm?"

"Let me check." Twitch peered at the navigator. "No, I think we've gone too far. We wouldn't make it until after nightfall, and it's a bad idea to travel after dark."

Tanis was beginning to regain control. "Why is it so dangerous?" he demanded. "We have weapons, you know, Private."

"Yes sir, but at night the temperature drops really low. Sometimes if the air is moist you get frost, even. And at night, you get krayt dragons. They're nocturnal, mostly. I mean, there've been sightings in daylight, but those are really rare, so I wouldn't worry too much about that-"

"So where should we head for, then, Private?" Cody interrupted gently.

Twitch took the hint and glanced at the screen again. "Um…oh, okay. Looks like we're coming up to Whitesun Peak, sir."

"What's that?" demanded Tanis.

"It's just this giant rock formation, sir. Like a mountain. They say it was part of Mochot Steep once, but there was a rockslide or something. Anyway, we're on Thar land now, so they'll find us in a day or two, even if we can't find them. And Whitesun Peak has all these little caves and caverns and stuff where we can camp for the night. We can radio back to base for a new speeder or repair supplies, and we'll just wait in there." He pointed out the viewport. They could make out the distant peak now, a jagged white tower rising over the sand, like a tooth scraping the sky.

The engine failed completely as they approached the Peak, but according to Twitch, it would have done this even if the coolant tanks had been fine. "Electronic stuff gets weird around Whitesun. It's got this, like, magnetic field or something. That's one of the reasons the Thar claimed it. They think it's some kind of holy ground." They carried it the last few meters. It was light enough for the unit to lift together, and they received unexpected help from Tanis, even if he was too weak to lift more than a small part of the rear bumper. "It's my duty to see the mission completed successfully," he gasped when Twitch offered him the opportunity to supervise instead.

They found a cave far in enough to shield them from sudden sandstorms, extreme temperatures, and unfriendly natives or predatory creatures, and then Twitch and Tanis stepped back out beyond the reach of whatever magnetic power the rock had, to send the transmission requesting supplies and backup from the Anchorhead base before the suns slipped completely below the horizon.

Now, sitting beside the small emergency heat lamp and looking around at what he had already come to think of as "their cave" (he'd always been good at making himself at home in places), Twitch struggled to recall something that the few Thar he knew who lived in town, and the old smugglers who did business with the Hutts and sometimes had to cross the dunes, had said about Whitesun Peak. Some kind of ghost stories or something, legends about how the vast network of caves, tunnels, and catacombs inside and under the mountain contained the lairs of monsters, spirits, and witches- or maybe beings that were all three at once- and even the entrance to the Tuskens' Hél itself.

Being a clone trooper, of course, he'd had 99.99% of the spirituality, superstition, and credulity bred out of him before he was decanted (99.99% because, of course, even in a cloning system devoid of all human error, absolute perfection could never be reached- and the Empire's system contained plenty of human error at times). Still, Twitch thought, it would have been nice if he could've remembered the stories- he could have told them for the unit and Tanis, and maybe everyone would've gotten a kick out of them; maybe it would have made everyone that much more relaxed. As it was, Burninator radiated a casual hatred of all authority except Cody's, which he tolerated, but especially Tanis'. Cody seemed about as deadbeat as a trooper was able to be, in fact the whole unit did. Tanis, for his part, was a stuck-up bully to compensate for the fact that he was also a bundle of nerves and social anxiety. Twitch had heard of scrawny misfit kids who got beaten up in school and joined the Navy looking for manhood and a sense of camaraderie, and he'd bet the few credits he'd managed to obtain in his life that Tanis was one of those.

He expected this sort of thing from officers, especially new ones like Tanis, but he was bewildered by the attitude of the unit. He hadn't expected them to be like this at all.

"What are we going to do when we find the Thar?" he asked now.

Cody looked up from cleaning his blaster. "You know the tribe better than we do, Private. What do you suggest?"

Twitch swallowed his nervousness at being suddenly put on the spot. "Well, we're asking a lot of them," he began. "I mean, they have very close-knit families. We're asking them to give us one of their tribe's children. They won't be happy about that."

"So what?" Burninator grinned. "This is a desert planet, man, and those tents have gotta be flammable." He cracked up, to a joke that was not apparent to Twitch.

Cody glared at Burninator and then turned back to Twitch. "Sorry, Private. You were saying."

Twitch tried to put Burninator's contribution out of his mind. Beside them, Tanis was staring at the clone. "I think we should announce ourselves to one of their sentries, if we can find them, and come to the camp on foot, with our helmets off and our blasters in the holsters. They'd take it as more respectful. I mean, their warriors might make a big thing out of making us put our hands up and taking our blasters, but it's just for show. They know they can't fight the Empire. It's a bitter enough pill for them to swallow as it is. If we go through the whole 'surrender' thing, it'll make them feel less sore about it."

Cody heaved a deep sigh. "Private, be honest: is there any chance they're going to give up this girl without a fight?"

"I don't know." Twitch considered it. "It's possible, if we explain that the order's coming from her father and she's not in any trouble. Their chief, Kylja Vigdyr, is a lot smarter about galactic politics than most of the locals. She might understand."

"Commander?" Cody turned away from the cave's entrance and looked behind him. The young local private, Twitch, was watching him.

"Yes?" he asked as patiently as he could.

For a moment, the young man's courage seemed to fail him. Then, he seemed to regain it, and asked, "It's just…sir…you must know what people say about your unit."

"What do people say, private?"

"Well…sir…I mean…well, you're legends! What you did during the Clone War-"

Cody cut him off. "Did you fight in the Clone War, private?"

"Well, no, it was before my time-"

"So you've never taken aim at a man you've served with in hostile territory for months on end and shot him in the back?"

Twitch stared. "What do you…? Sir, I'm sure…but that's against the Code-"

"Kriff the bloody Code." Cody stepped forward, feeling the way he often thought Burninator must feel all the time. "What do you want to know, Private? What it's like being the glory of the Imperial infantry? What it was like saving the galaxy from those nasty, evil Separatists and nasty, evil Rebels? What Burninator's problem is?" He laughed harshly. "Well, nobody really knows that last one."

He shifted. "You know, Burninator's been pissing off the gen-norms since he was decanted? And we all covered for him, but me especially, because I was always the one going to be put in for Commander. You know how it goes. I've always been the responsible one in the unit. And I'm telling you this because I have a feeling you are, too. And because I don't think this unit will be around much longer. Don't talk, listen. There's ways to make us disappear, and gods know it's easy as hell to clone more. So I want to tell you a little story, Twitch…"

"Twitch." He glanced at the young private. "Where'd you get that name?"

"I've got a twitch in my right eye." Twitch shrugged; he rarely ever talked about this part of his life. He didn't see why it was necessary to dwell on it. He didn't really even like his name, now that he came to think of it, but there wasn't anything that he could do about that; it was his _Name._ "Anyway, when I was decanted, I was scheduled to be, you know…to not progress any further. They were worried it would affect my eyesight. But one of the senior guys took me off the list, and now my eyesight's completely average." He shrugged again. "But that's what they call me. You know."

"I've heard." Cody nodded at him. "Well, Twitch, it's a long time until morning, so you might as well know the story of how we got to be out here with you." He looked out at the darkened horizon again. "Here at the edge of the world."


End file.
